bringing out the dead

Ever tried bringing someone back to life? Well, it's not easy. And everything becomes a blur, and yet every single moment unfurls in slow motion. For instance, you find her lifeless body on the floor and the first thing you notice is that she's terribly pale and unmoving. Her eyes are dead white, and you realise later that it's because her pupils were upturned -- a pathophysiological sign of a person being dead, or dying. You don't remember her face, not exactly, but you can recall the unnaturally slack jaw on her small countenance, so you must have been looking at her. Looking for any evidence, or hint, or sign, or trace, or indication of life. There were none.

And you panic. You can't think. But you have to do your job; you have to look calm and composed, and you surprise yourself for managing that at least. The sight shocks you, and it jolts you into action. You rush to her aid: you check for the pulse (none!), for breathing (none!), and you trace the rib line to find the exact spot they teach you in medical books and lectures to pound the heart back to life. You hear her mother in the background, and whatever information filters through to your brain makes the situation even harder to comprehend.

She's only 21! A history of heart problems! And you start to think: "What madness is this? I don't belong here!" You feel like you're out of your depth, and you're sinking fast, but it's too late for that now. You have a job to do; you have to bring someone back to life. But her ribs are amazingly sturdy, and you have to push down harder, and notwithstanding whatever they teach you in regards to life over limb, you still fear the sound of ribs cracking under all that pressure. And every compression on her chest makes her head bang slightly against the floor but the senior paramedic is telling you to keep up the pressure so you do as you're told.

Then you notice the other trainee paramedic fumbling with his equipment, and you stop to help the incompetent whelp, and the fool is still rummaging through his bag and looking absolutely lost even though he's been working in an ambulance for, what, four months now, and this is only your second day and the first time you're actually trying to resuscitate somebody. Panic begins to set in again, but you force your way through that cloud and you manage to insert the airway device in her mouth to keep her tongue from blocking the trachea, and you feel like screaming at the idiot trainee to do his part but the senior paramedic is already screaming at you to restart CPR again.

It's all beginning to get messy, and the shot of adrenalin you prepared on the way here is unused because the senior paramedic can't get a vein open, and the defibrillator is completely useless at this point because she has no heartbeat. And so everyone is rushing back to the ambulance downstairs to get her to the hospital, and she's completely limp.

The ride to the hospital feels like forever, and you're still banging on her chest to get a rhythm at least, and you're banging against the inside of the ambulance and you hit your knee against something hard and metal and it starts to bleed. And the ride still feels like forever. Your arms start to get tired, and the senior paramedic is trying to get the IV infusion working, so you tell the other trainee paramedic to take over while you do the oxygen bagging.

As you touch her head to realign the neck, you feel that it's still warm. It's still warm! And there's a feeling of weight being lifted, a glimmer of hope that she can still make it. It's still warm! You pump oxygen into her lungs with renewed vigor, hoping against hope. "Please don't let her die on me," you start pleading to whoever is up there watching this whole thing unfold. Please.

And finally the ambulance stops, and everybody's rushing out and into the A&E. You're still compressing the heart again and again on the stretcher, on the way in. The staff nurse takes over and calls some doctors to the room and your job is done. You pull away, asking yourself if you did the whole thing right, running the events in your head in a loop, questioning your actions in every single detail. The senior paramedic goes to the registration counter to fill up some forms, and you feel like you really need a smoke, but you want to see if she makes it out alive. You're left alone to think, and only then do you remember the throbbing in your left knee.

You walk back to the ambulance to get a band-aid and a print-out from the lifepack machine. And as the ticker-tape paper rolls out, the ECG reading makes it look like there actually was a heart rhythm; the spikes between the flatlines. But that was when you were doing CPR. The rest is flat. So you wait. The senior paramedic tells you this will help in an inquiry; proof that, if she dies, we had tried to help revive her heart on the way to the hospital.

Then you hear someone sobbing, and its her mother. And someone who looks like her sister, she's crying too. Then her father puts his hands to his face, and his body starts to shake. And this young boy, probably her kid brother, and a few other relatives who've just arrived, they start crying too. There's a lump in your throat and your heart starts to feel heavy, like a guilty man about to face the gallows.

And that's when you know she's dead.